Nope wont work, its the same with SLI on Xfire only boards though there are hacks to get SLI working on Xfire only boards but I'm not aware of any for Xfire on SLI boards.

You are better off with two nVidia GPUs on a nVidia board if you want dual GPUs.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-03-15, 09:47:

Nope wont work, its the same with SLI on Xfire only boards though there are hacks to get SLI working on Xfire only boards but I'm not aware of any for Xfire on SLI boards.

You are better off with two nVidia GPUs on a nVidia board if you want dual GPUs.

Thanks for the heads up. I would have wasted money on ATI cards. What nVidia cards do you recommend? Maybe something period correct to 2006/7?

A pair of 8800 GT(2007) or 8800GTX(2006) cards would work, though I would go slightly ahead to 2009 and get a pair of 9800GTX+ cards instead and avoid any bumpgate issues 8000 series cards may have.

If you really want period correct then you will likely have issues due to the horrible solder nVidia was using during the 7000 and 8000 series GPUs, both gens are prone to issues that kills the GPU. So if you go with period correct you may want to stick to tested cards and make 100% sure they are working when you get them.

*If you cant find any 9800GTX+ cards at reasonable prices you can just grab a pair of Geforce GTS 250 cards as they are the 9800GTX+ cards rebadged, I have a pair of GTS250s and they are solid cards. (Got them rather cheap too as people just want to offload them and they are not big ticket cards)

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-03-15, 10:03:

A pair of 8800 GT(2007) or 8800GTX(2006) cards would work, though I would go slightly ahead to 2009 and get a pair of 9800GTX+ cards instead and avoid any bumpgate issues 8000 series cards may have.

If you really want period correct then you will likely have issues due to the horrible solder nVidia was using during the 7000 and 8000 series GPUs, both gens are prone to issues that kills the GPU. So if you go with period correct you may want to stick to tested cards and make 100% sure they are working when you get them.

*If you cant find any 9800GTX+ cards at reasonable prices you can just grab a pair of Geforce GTS 250 cards as they are the 9800GTX+ cards rebadged, I have a pair of GTS250s and they are solid cards. (Got them rather cheap too as people just want to offload them and they are not big ticket cards)

Wow thank you so much for the advise.

I just grabbed 2x 8800GT’s (confirmed working) for about $40 each delivered. This is my first XP retro build. Very excited.

zuldan wrote on 2024-03-15, 10:23:

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-03-15, 10:03:

A pair of 8800 GT(2007) or 8800GTX(2006) cards would work, though I would go slightly ahead to 2009 and get a pair of 9800GTX+ cards instead and avoid any bumpgate issues 8000 series cards may have.

If you really want period correct then you will likely have issues due to the horrible solder nVidia was using during the 7000 and 8000 series GPUs, both gens are prone to issues that kills the GPU. So if you go with period correct you may want to stick to tested cards and make 100% sure they are working when you get them.

*If you cant find any 9800GTX+ cards at reasonable prices you can just grab a pair of Geforce GTS 250 cards as they are the 9800GTX+ cards rebadged, I have a pair of GTS250s and they are solid cards. (Got them rather cheap too as people just want to offload them and they are not big ticket cards)

Wow thank you so much for the advise.

I just grabbed 2x 8800GT’s (confirmed working) for about $40 each delivered. This is my first XP retro build. Very excited.

nice cards, enjoy and punish them cards with Crysis too they love being pushed !

You can get it kinda working, but not on anything lower than HD3xx0 I think and with very specific driver versions. Think they were somewhere in the Catalyst 12.xx to 16.xx range. So if your games like something much earlier or later then it's not all that helpful. I think it's more of a Windows7 thing than an XP thing too. I do remember having to run driver cleaners to get rid of all old catalyst components before I could get the right driver working though.

Afaik the "SLI enabled" was something ridiculous as NVIDIA driver being hardcoded for specific PCI ID of the southbridge. Hack was bypassing the check.
I wasnt aware ATI copied this anti consumer practice and also locked cards to specific board upsell models.

Yeah, really it's pretty much PCIe lanes are PCIe lanes and it's just working around the software douchebaggery.

rasz_pl wrote on 2024-03-15, 21:27:

Afaik the "SLI enabled" was something ridiculous as NVIDIA driver being hardcoded for specific PCI ID of the southbridge. Hack was bypassing the check.
I wasnt aware ATI copied this anti consumer practice and also locked cards to specific board upsell models.

Its not ATI locking it here its nVidia, pretty sure if it was any other chipset Xfire would run just fine but this board doesn't support Xfire at all due solely to it being a nForce board and only having SLI certification. AFAIK all nVidia chipset based boards were like this and refused to run Xfire at all, unless they came with one of them fancy cards that switched between Xfire and SLI but I dont remember them being present on nForce boards. (I could be wrong here)

Not sure you could even hack your way around the shit nVidia does with nForce chipsets, perhaps if you could spoof the PCID number for the GPUs to make them appear as nVidia cards.

GTX285 would be way better for Crysis. Crysis doesn't care about SLI, it wants more video memory.

kingcake wrote on 2024-03-16, 00:47:

GTX285 would be way better for Crysis. Crysis doesn't care about SLI, it wants more video memory.

OP wanted period correct and 285 late 2008 early 2009 its not a great fit for this board, if it was AM2+ or Core2 then sure, the 285 really wants a beefy CPU to make it worth the extra cost.